Selket

By Jean Graham
Page 2 of 7

Arcanian bounty ships were not noted for creature comforts --
less so their holding cells. The cargo hold comprised ten cells;
cold, featureless and filthy, divided by heavy sheets of ventilated
perspex that had seen better days. It might have been transparent
once. Time and a succession of human miseries had left it
scratched, cloudy and ochre-brown. Avon did not care to
contemplate the various inscriptions etched into the plastic walls;
he was more concerned with the mystery of just where the Arcanians
might have discovered a price on his head higher than that offered
by the Federation. He hadn't been aware of any such bounty. Yet,
clearly, it existed. And a high price it must be. Arcanian bounty
hunters tended to slave-running if and when wanted criminals failed
to keep their holds full. But this ship had only one prisoner.

Servalan, perhaps... He considered the possibility that the
president of the Terran Federation, after her recent disgrace at
the hands of Sula Chesku (already difficult to think of that woman
as Anna -- his Anna), might have chosen to work outside the
Administration in order to get her hands on him. Hadn't she
offered him shared power on Sarran? Half the known worlds in
exchange for his soul. What a pity she was nothing but lies and
treachery: he might have been quite content with only one world,
had he been able to believe she could deliver it. One world, and
the wealth to be free of Federation interference for the rest of
his natural life...

The rusty squeal of the cell block door coming open distracted
him. Through the circular holes cut in the murky plastic, he could
see the woman entering with a bowl of something in her hands.
Lorga had called her "Min" when they boarded the ship, an
incongruously diminutive name. She was neither small nor in the
least attractive to anything other than a Terran bilge rat, which
creature she most closely resembled. Shuffling to the door of his
cell, she stooped and thrust the bowl through one of the openings.
It clumped to the floor and splattered part of its greasy contents
onto the plex wall. Avon made no move to retrieve it. The oily-
meat odor and the stench of Min herself had already overpowered the
stale urine smell of the cell.

Avon was impressed despite himself. Who could possibly have
offered a bounty that high, for him? And why?

"Unlikely," he said, and delighted in seeing the grin dissolve
from her dirty face. "No one outside the Federation is anywhere
near that wealthy."

She snorted, scratching noisily at the crotch of her stiff
coveralls. "S'wat yer think. Two days fm now yer'll know
differnt." She scuffed away before he could ask any more, the
hatch creaking, then banging shut behind her.

Avon sat with his arms draped over his knees, back to the
cleanest of the cell's four walls, and contemplated the scant
information he'd just obtained. Three and a half million credits
and a two day journey by sub-standard drive. That meant they would
not leave the sector; would not even clear the next half dozen
solar systems. Surely anyone wealthy enough to pay so huge a
bounty would not be completely unknown?

"Could've been the Arcanians, I suppose. Would maybe explain
what they were doing here."

Dayna saw the subtle change in Tarrant's eyes that might have
signalled dismay. "Arc-what?" she asked.

Tarrant's index finger toyed with the weapon's firing stud.
"Bounty hunters," he said, and then to the sweating man in the
command chair, "I think you'd better explain that. What were
Arcanians doing here?"

The man eyed him coldly. "You're Blake's crew, aren't you?"

"Maybe." Tarrant was undeterred. "Answer the question."

"They knew you were coming. Set you up, I suppose, with our
weapons for bait. And we had orders not to interfere."

"Decoys," the man insisted, "with mutoid crews. The real
ships are still berthed right here, except the four out on patrol.
Check for yourself."

"But they fired at us!" Dayna exclaimed. "How could a dummy
ship do that?"

"We equipped two with weaponry."

Tarrant scowled. "I knew it was too easy. But it's still a
damned expensive decoy. Why? Who gave you the order not to
interfere?"

The man shrugged, smiling craftily. "No names, my friend.
But it came from the top -- from high command."

"Servalan." Dayna spoke the name as a curse.
The base commander said nothing.

"Zen said there was an eighth ship launched," Tarrant
recalled. "Our friends the Arcanians, I suppose?"

The commander smiled.

Dayna squelched the temptation to wipe the floor with those
teeth. "Where have they taken him?"

"I wouldn't know."

Tarrant bit his lip, thinking for a moment. "Bounty hunters
usually want a payoff: that's their business, after all. And they
didn't collect it here. So who's paying it?"

"I wouldn't know that either."

Dayna's gun in his ribs made him stiffen and go suddenly very
quiet. "Don't know very much, do you?" she queried softly. "We
could arrange to make that a permanent condition."

But Tarrant's look said otherwise. A pity. She would have
enjoyed killing this worm.

"Cally," Tarrant was saying into his bracelet, "we're wasting
our time here. Bring us up."

Liberator's teleport room rippled into being around them then,
and Dayna's exhilaration at the near-kill slumped. "Bounty
hunters," she said to Cally and Vila's anxious stares. In tandem,
she and Tarrant replaced their bracelets in the rack. "Arcanian
bounty hunters."

"Wonderful," Vila opined. "And after Servalan and that Grant
woman scrambled his brains last week, he was ripe to walk into it.
You don't suppose he deliberately...?"

"No." Cally's denial left no room for argument.

"Someone went to a great deal of trouble," Tarrant said. "The
bounty hunters could have turned him over to the Federation then
and there -- only they didn't. That would seem to rule out
Servalan as a candidate."

Dayna had removed her gunbelt and was twisting the synth-
leather strap between her fingers. "Somebody wanted Avon badly."

"Somebody got him," Tarrant said, already en route to the
flight deck. "Let's find out if Orac's been able to trace that
ship."